The gammarus are crustaceans that live in the water of many different rivers, but which are particularly diffuse wherever the aquatic habitat is integral under the profile of pollution and rich of flourishing submerged vegetation. These invertebrates spend a good part of their time hidden between the plants and the stones of the river bottom, moving from a pasture zone to the others with fast and regular swims. During their movements, however, they risk to become the easy target of the fish attacks, especially in those periods of the year in which up-wings and sedges make sporadic hatches and prefer to stay well protected in the hiding places of the river. In fishing terms, all this makes the flies with the aspect of gammarus particularly attractive for trout and grayling and it should not surprise us that many fly fishing techniques, to be very effective, suggest the use of such imitations. In the case of the "Polish technique”, for example, which is a way of using the nymphs extremely indicated to turbulent and fast waters, a great majority of anglers prefer to practice it with slim and remarkably weighted imitations of gammarus, which are often mounted in number of two or three on a leaders with droppers. These flies can be built with the fur of various animals and provided of trembling appendixes, or tied with compact dubbing of synthetic fibres, like Red SLF Gammarus: a splendid nymph that I learned to build following the dressing that Torill Kolbu suggested to me.

INSTRUCTIONS

We start the building process of our fly, clamping into the vice jay the hook and wrapping along its shank a piece of fine lead, in a way to realise the ballast structure of the fly. Therefore we tie in the thread on the hook and we wrap it around the lead turns, so to make joint them very firmly to the shank

With the red thread, we tie in a short piece of fine copper wire and one strip of pale brown Magic Shrimp Foil, or latex, fixing both them on the hook bend

We wax a short section of the thread and we distribute on it a small quantity polypropylene dyed of clear orange, followed from one of scarlet red, and finally from one of claret, forming a compact dubbing. Next we wrap the dubbing around the three rear quarters of the hook shank

We push forward the Magic Shrimp Foil strip, placing it in a way to cover the body, and we fix it over the hook portion lacking in dubbing

Winding in wide coils the copper wire around the fly body, we make the ribbing

Now we make free the Magic Shrimp Foil strip from the thread turns and push its front edge backwards, stopping then the copper wire in front the body portion already prepared

We cut away the surplus of the copper wire and then we wax a new section of the thread, over which we distribute a small quantity of polypropylene dyed of brown mixed with hare’s mask fur. We compact the dubbing and we turn it around the front quarter of the hook shank, in order to finish the fly body

We push forward the Magic Shrimp Foil strip, laying it to cover the back of the last body section, and we fix it just behind the hook eye

We trim away the exceeding part of the material used to form the fly back and we build the gammarus head with repeated turns of thread, then we whip finish it

The Red SLF Gammarus can be now used during our next
fishing trip, ready for helping us to tempt a beautiful trout that is
feeding on small crustaceans in a river or in a lake

MATERIALS LIST

HOOK: Grub size 14 to 6BALLAST: fine lead wireTHREAD: red BODY: in four sections of equal size, the first the second and the third realised with polypropylene dyed of clear orange, scarlet red, and claret; the fourth relized with poplypropylene dyed brown mixed with hare’s fur BACK OF THE BODY: pale brown Magic Shrimp Foil, or latexRIBBING: fine copper wire